Roll was momentarily stunned by the sheer amount of personal information being divulged to her. Listening to Meiru listen to her friends was one thing, but there were only two people in the world who talked to Roll like this, one-on-one. (Well, one person and one Navi.) For a moment, she had no idea what to say.

“Should I talk to him?” Rockman asked. “He knows I’m here, and all.”

“Maybe? But…” Netto had said it all to her. That meant something, didn’t it?

While she was pondering the enormity of the messages in front of her, Rockman wrote,
[MSG: ] I don’t think my Netto-kun thinks of you as a ‘good soldier’, exactly…
[MSG: ] After you two met up in your apartment, I don’t think I ever heard anything like that from him.

(If anything, Netto-kun was the one who was too much of a 'good soldier', or who at least pretended to be. It felt strange to see Netto-san refer to himself that way.)

That brought to Rockman’s mind the strangeness with Rockman-san in the computer, and how rapidly things had fallen apart afterward. They’d talked to Rockman-san after that, but they’d never set the record straight with Netto-san. It felt like a major oversight, now.

In the meantime, though, Roll was carefully feeling a message of her own out.

[MSG: ] It… isn’t the tournament that Meiru-chan feels she can’t talk to you over, really. This started a long time ago, now.

Though it certainly hadn’t helped his case any. But Netto was clearly remorseful about it all, even when Roll was fairly certain half of that ‘crazy’ behavior hadn’t entirely been his fault. And if he'd just been preoccupied the times before, that explained a lot...

So she continued,
[MSG: ] But at the same time, that was all a long time ago, right?
[MSG: ] Meiru-chan’s making her own path toward moving on and setting things right, after what happened because of the rescue mission. So maybe we shouldn’t feel all awkward around you anymore, either.
[MSG: ] You seem really different from our Netto, but that’s not a problem for Meiru-chan with Netto-chan or Netto-ko. So it shouldn’t be a problem with Meiru-chan and you!

Really, the things that felt strangest to Roll were nothing to do with her and Meiru personally any longer—the way he’d made Mel feel, the way Netto-chan didn’t want anything to do with him.

[MSG: ] …Though, a lot of our friends seem ill-at-ease around you, too. So I wonder if she just feels as if she’s picked a side, by being friends with Netto-chan and Mel-chan…

She was still typing, this time about Netto’s opening line, when she noticed that the piano music had stopped. Meiru was probably getting herself a cup of tea, getting ready to settle in for the evening…

[MSG: ] Wanna see if Meiru-chan wants to talk about it? She just finished her piano practice for the night. ( ܸ.ˬ.ܸ)

(Roll figured it was better for Netto to ask than for Meiru to walk back in and discover she’d gone and messaged him on a whim. That was kinda weird.)

It didn’t seem to Roll that Enzan was being ‘a dick’, just that he had probably expected more out of them as his partners in the Net Saviors. (It didn’t even occur to her that Netto would be referring to the one from his world, who’d been nothing but courteous both times they’d been in contact.) But this time she was the one distracted by Netto’s explanation of Rockman’s ‘encounter’ while she was still typing her reply.

Abandoning the conversation for a moment, she whirled around to face him. “Wait, what does he mean ‘out of hand’?”

“Well, uh, yeah,” Rockman explained. “It’s like Netto-san says. Rockman-san has… been through a lot.”

Roll made a face; she could tell Rockman was trying to cover for something.

“He lost control of Beast Out,” Rockman finally told her, and her face relaxed. “I hope he knows that I’m not… upset, or offended, or anything.” Of course it had been something like that. “Talking to Netto-san really helped me get it a little better.”

[MSG: ] Rockman says to tell him “apology accepted!” And he said talking to you about it really helped!

And then things circled back around to why they were having this chat in the first place. Roll was a bit lost as to what to do. “I think you ought to be honest with him, Roll-chan,” Rockman advised her.

[MSG: ] Well, the truth is, I just wanted to get to know you a little better! ^_^
[MSG: ] You and my Operator didn’t seem to click, and the same goes for some of the other people she’s gotten to know from the chatroom. But you were so kind to Rockman.
[MSG: ] So, I started wondering, maybe you all just started off on the wrong foot?
[MSG: ] And I kinda, well, decided to say hi for myself and see.
[MSG: ] I know it’s weird, but
[MSG: ] I dunno! (,,>﹏<,,)

Roll’s smile gained a few cringe-like characteristics for a moment, at Netto’s first question. Their performance hadn’t won them very many points from Enzan and their Netto, and that was because they were their Enzan and Netto, but they’d still had to sit there through some pretty uncomfortable conversations…!

[MSG: ] Well, it gave Meiru-chan’s friends at home a scare… but other than that, we’re doing great!

And just like that, another message was batted across the divide, one with a far more enjoyable subject…

[MSG: ] °ʚ(´꒳`)ɞ° Isn’t he?

…And a more worrisome one, though it dovetailed with what Rockman had shared earlier.

[MSG: ] He’s doing great today, thanks to you. But…
[MSG: ] An encounter?

Roll turned to the Navi in question. “What does he—?”

Rockman was mercifully spared from explaining the aftermath of the Hanged Man by Netto’s final volley of texts.

[MSG: ] Nono, you’re good! ^_^
[MSG: ] If we blamed ourselves for the stuff we did under somebody else’s control, that wouldn’t be too fair, would it?
[MSG: ] So of course I wouldn't do that to someone else!

Roll looked across to her window out to Meiru’s room, noticing Rockman follow suit out of the corner of her eye. She was only about halfway through her usual piano exercises, picking up speed as she usually did now that she was warmed up. Maybe Meiru expected the Netto who had seemed to hardly have time for her during the rescue, or at the sleepover; maybe she expected to get read the riot act like she had with her own Enzan, or have to deal with another Netto being as cross as hers had been. But that certainly wasn’t the impression she was getting now…

Roll looked from Netto’s message to Rockman and back again. “Now what?” she whispered, as if Netto could somehow peer into Meiru’s house network.

“Well, you could, uh, ask how he’s doing, or—“

“Right, right!” Roll, inspired, began to type.

“Roll-chan, wait, wait—“

[MSG: ] It sounds like you took good care of my Rockman () the other night! So I just wanted to say thanks. ^_^
[MSG: ] Are you feeling any better?

“‘Feeling better’?” wondered Rockman, still a bit put out by being the main subject matter. “At least, he seemed like he was fine…”

“He looked pretty out of it at the Colossus Challenge,” Roll explained. “That was the last time Meiru-chan and I saw him, so it feels like I oughta ask.” He sure hadn’t seemed like the type to give Rockman what sounded like a very kind pep talk, for that matter… but then, everyone who’d been under Serpentine’s control had been a bit different.

“And… yeah,” Rockman finished. “So, um, that’s what happened.”

“I see…”

Meiru decided to leave Roll and Rockman to their conversation rather than continue to listen in, stepping away from the computer to run through a few piano exercises. At this point, she could do them in her sleep; it was less of a distraction and more giving her hands something to do while she thought.

She was very much aware, at this point, that the tall Netto was a bit odd when it came to Synchro. She’d been tasked with taking that Link and his PET away from him at the Colossus Challenge because of it, after all. But Rockman’s story, of Synchro across worlds, still managed to surprise her. It was another strange thing to throw on the pile, with their inability to properly connect early on and the way he’d made Mel feel after the kidnapping. Not enough to confront him over, not that she’d know how to without completely destroying this civility they were currently in—and with Alpha’s shadow still looming, they definitely needed to keep said civility intact. Sort of like with Aon.

Nobody said she had to be friends with every Netto. It still felt weird and sad not to at least be friendlier, though.

In the house network, though, Rockman and Roll’s conversation had moved into similar territory. “You… really don’t think they could work it out, huh?” sighed Rockman.

“I think that taller Netto-san is just… too similar, while not being similar enough,” Roll settled on. “Meiru-chan expects a sort of familiarity that isn’t there, but then she gets rejected, because…”

“I sort of get the sense Netto-san’s Meiru is really different,” Rockman finished.

“Yeah, exactly,” Roll said. “Not in the broad strokes, but in the little ways, like how one would respond to the other. And now Meiru-chan knows Mel-chan better than tall Netto-san, so there’s a bit of a bias on top of it…”

“Netto-chan, too…” recalled Rockman.

“Netto-chan?” wondered Roll, then realized, “You’re not saying they don’t get along, either?!”

Rockman sighed, bonking his helmet into Roll’s shoulder, giving up entirely. “How did things end up like this…?”

“I don’t know,” Roll sighed, hugging Rockman back. “Our Netto-san seemed to forgive tall Netto-san as soon as he met him, but it’s just not happening with anyone else.” She sighed, “There’s gotta be an easier way than making him and Meiru-chan share some kinda awful dream…”

“I don’t think he can Synchro with people that way, anyway,” Rockman pointed out. Amused by the idea, he pointed out, “He’d be able to connect to Mel-chan and Netto-chan that way, too, and then we probably wouldn’t even feel the need to talk about this.”

Roll was quiet for a suspiciously long moment.

Slowly, Rockman returned to a free-standing position. She wasn’t really going to just go ahead and message Netto-san out of nowhere, was she…?

“Well, why not?” smiled Roll, her message already input. “If nothing else, the two of us can get to know him a little better.”

[MSG: ] Hello! ^_^ It's me, 's Roll-chan!

The mention of Rockman in the message caught him off-guard, but Roll had already gone and sent it.